The Woodcarver

On the dark side of the street, where the maples and chestnuts block out almost all of the sun, an old woodcarver made his shop. His hands rough as leather, he set about each day preparing his wares for market: Baskets, boxes, the occasional knife handle. One busy week, all he made were small jewelry boxes, which he could sell to young children for Mother’s day gifts and the like. On weeks which were not busy, he could take his time, and focus on the works of his heart. The woodcarver thought a great deal about his work, it being the sort of work that lets you think while doing it, and very often he thought about how much he might owe of his life and livelihood to the great trees which had been felled for his wares. Today he stood up, drew one of the hatchets from the bucket at his feet, and set about sharpening it for the day ahead. At the grindstone, sparks jumped and extinguished themselves into his greying beard, which grew to a gentle point the length of a ladle from his chin. When the tool was as sharp as it was powerful, he walked to the backyard where lay a piece of majestic oak that had stood tall and handsome even when the woodcarver was a young boy. It was the last piece of this tree, which had been severed by a lightning strike near his childhood home and had fallen gracefully onto their garden- as if to ensure that the poor family knew that it meant them no harm, offering its body as a gift of bountiful harvest in lieu of the snap peas and cabbages that it landed on. The old woodcarver, remembering his parents weeping over the loss of the garden, cursing the tree for having landed on their only source of food for the coming terrible winter (for the winters were always terrible then), let a single tear drip down his cheek. This was the tree which had taught him to carve, to take the gift of a tree’s life, the hundreds of years of watching over the forest, and to return to it his own gift, the gift of time and love and sweat. The first thing he carved, sitting by the fire his family had made from the still-damp remains of the oak, dropping his shavings into the fireplace to keep himself warm, was a spoon. His hands were not so calloused then, and holding the knife for so long began to hurt, but as his family had nothing to eat soup with, he had to continue. That old house was soon filled with rough-hewn bowls, spoons, cups, a small jewelry box, a plaque with his family name hanging over the door, each a better gift to the oak tree than the last. He still ate from that spoon as a reminder of the lessons it had taught him, and with each helping of soup his hands caressed the handle and the bowl in the knowing way of someone remembering every single stroke of the knife from all those years ago.

Today, he thanked his old friend as he always did before making the first cut, for his time and his life, and promised to make the best use he could out of this, the last of his body. Taking up the hatchet, he steadily peeled away strips from the outside, feeling and following the grain, until at last he got to the tree’s heart. Back inside, he took his first knife, and for the rest of the day, well into the afternoon, set about finding the true shape of this tree, the gift that had been given all those years ago. Finally, the spoon was done: The handle told the story of the great oak, and the bowl told the story of an old woodcarver. Where the handle met the bowl of the spoon, there was a vine of snap peas. On the end of the handle, he had burned his mark: A cabbage.

The gift completed, the sun setting, the old woodcarver gathered all of the shavings he had produced, all of the chips from the floor, the strips from the hatchet, and buried them by the big chestnut tree by the garden. Then, his task completed and his hands weary, he lay himself down to rest.

***

The poor family that bought the house from the old woodcarver’s bank in the years after his death had only just been settled in when they were terrified by a fierce thunderstorm that brought down one of the chestnut trees with a mighty crack- When, the next morning, they went out to inspect the damage, they found the old garden had been destroyed- and, in the cabbages, a beautiful wooden spoon.